Indigenous Autonomy: Constructing a Place for Ethnic Minorities in Taiwan’s Emerging Civic Society Scott Simon, professeur agrégé Département de sociologie et anthropologie Université d’Ottawa, Canada Chercheur invité Institut d’Asie Orientale, ÉNS-LSH Lyon, France Paper prepared for the Fifth European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS) Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, 18-20 April, 2008. Please do not cite or quote without the written permission of the author. E-mail:
[email protected]. Abstract: For more than two decades, indigenous autonomy has been one of the main demands of Taiwan’s indigenous rights movement. Indigenous autonomy was incorporated into Chen Shui-bian’s campaign promises in 1999, and subsequently adopted as a policy goal in the 2000 DPP White Paper on Indigenous Policy. In 2005, the passage of the Basic Law on Indigenous Peoples made it seem as if this goal could soon be fulfilled. The Taroko Nation, recognized by the ROC in 2004, initially seemed poised to create Taiwan’s first indigenous autonomous region. Those goals, however, have been slowed down by the emergence of communities and individuals in their defined territory who refuse Taroko identity and have launched a competing drive for recognition as the Sediq Nation. Some Taroko people also resist the project of autonomy on the grounds that it merely empowers a small elite and does nothing to address their more immediate economic problems. These counter movements suggest that more is at stake in “autonomy” than indigenous rights. This paper thus looks at the creation of indigenous autonomy as part of an emerging civic society for an independent Taiwan.